The Type 22 Broadsword class was a class of frigate built for the
British Royal Navy. Fourteen of the class were built in total, with
production divided into three batches. HMS Cornwall was the last
Royal Navy Type 22 frigate, retired from service on 30 June 2011

.

Seven ships of the earlier batches have been sold to Brazil,
Romania and Chile. Six of these remain in service and one was sold
for scrap. Of the decommissioned vessels, two were sunk as targets,
and five sold for scrap.

Nomenclature:

Broadsword, Boxer

It was originally envisaged that all Type 22s would have
names beginning with 'B' (Broadsword, etc.), following the 'A' names
used for Type 21s (Amazon, etc.). This changed after the Falklands
War when two replacement ships were ordered for the destroyers sunk
(Sheffield and Coventry) and were named to commemorate them. Another
vessel ordered earlier but not yet started, which was to be named
"Bloodhound" was renamed "London".

Cornwall

The alphabetical progression was re-established with the
Batch 3 ships (Cornwall, etc.) before being temporarily abandoned
with the Type 23 class, named after Dukedoms (Norfolk, Lancaster,
etc.). The Royal Navy's latest escort class (the Type 45 or Daring
class) have re-introduced the alphabetical progression, using
destroyer names from the 1930s and 1950s.

The names selected for the four Batch 3 ships were a mixture:
two, Cornwall and Cumberland, revived County-class names previously
carried both by First World War-era armoured cruisers, and by Second
World War-era heavy cruisers. The other Batch 3s, Chatham and
Campbeltown, were Town names, the former reviving a 1911 light
cruiser name, and the latter commemorating the most famous of the US
destroyers transferred to the Royal Navy in 1940; the name for HMS
Chatham was selected as a salute to the Medway town, where the naval
dockyard, established in 1570, had closed in 1984.

Design:

The Type 22 was designed to be a specialist anti-submarine
warfare vessel as part of the Royal Navy's contribution to NATO.
During Royal Navy service the ships evolved into general purpose
frigates with weapons for use against other surface ships, aircraft
and submarines. They were built in three batches giving rise to
three sub-classes, the first Broadsword of four ships, the second
Boxer of six ships and the third and final, Cornwall of four ships.

The four Broadswords (which included two Falklands War
veterans) were sold to Brazil in the mid 1990s. Romania has acquired
and modernised two of the Batch 2 ships, while a third was purchased
by Chile.

During their Royal Navy service the ships had enhanced
command, control and co-ordination facilities that resulted in their
often being used as flagships on deployments.

Evolution:

Following the cancellation of the aircraft carrier programme
CVA-01 in 1966, the Royal Navy undertook a reappraisal of the
surface fleet, and concluded that the following five new ship types
were required:

* A cruiser-type ship to operate large ASW helicopters (this
requirement eventually led to the Invincible class carriers);

* An air defence destroyer smaller and cheaper than the
'County' class (this resulted in the Type 42 programme);

* A missile-armed frigate as an eventual successor to the Type
12 Leander class (this requirement led to the Type 22);

* A cheap patrol frigate (this requirement led to the Type
21); and

* A dual-role MCMV successor to the 'Ton' class (this resulted
in the 'Hunt' class)

Of these, the air defence destroyer appeared to had been given
highest priority, the imperative being to get Sea Dart to sea in
numbers to replace the air defence capability which would be lost
with the retirement of the carrier fleet.

Visually, the Type 12 lineage in the Type 22 design is less than
obvious, though there are said to be similarities in the underwater
hull form. Due to the workload of the Admiralty design department in
the 1960s, a private design (Type 21) was purchased as an interim
stop-gap whilst the Type 22 was under development. The design
process, already hampered by the priority given to the Type 21 and
the urgently needed Type 42, was further protracted by attempts to
produce a common Anglo-Dutch design. The first Type 22 order was
placed in 1972 with Yarrow Shipbuilders; Yarrow undertook much of
the detailed design work whilst overall responsibility remained with
the Ship Department at Bath.

The length of the first four Type 22s was dictated by the dimensions
of the undercover Frigate Refit Complex at Devonport Dockyard. The
ships would be powered by a combination of Olympus and Tyne gas
turbines in a COGOG (COmbined Gas turbine Or Gas turbine)
arrangement. Machinery spaces were sited as far aft as possible to
minimise shaft lengths. The after configuration was dictated by the
requirement for a large hangar and a full-width flight deck.

Weapons fit was determined by the primary ASW role combined with a
perceived need for a general purpose capability. The principal ASW
weapons systems were the ship's Lynx helicopter and triple torpedo
tubes (STWS), with 2087 towed array sonar a key part of the sensors
fit. Air defence was provided in the form of two 'six-pack'
launchers for the Seawolf (GWS 25) point-defence missile system.
Surface warfare requirements were met by the provision of four
Exocet SSM launchers, the standard RN fit at that time. A pair of
L/60 Bofors were fitted in the first batch for patrol and junk
busting on summer Indian Ocean deployments, but proved expedient in
the Falkland were T22 captains considered they interfered with
concentrating on Seawolf setup.

The Broadsword design was unique to the Royal Navy in lacking a main
gun armament. Although some of the Leander class frigates had lost
their main gun armament during upgrades, Broadsword was the first to
be designed from the beginning without a large calibre gun turret.
This changed with the introduction of the Batch III ships.

Ordering of Type 22s proceeded slowly, in part because of the
comparatively high unit cost of the ships. The unit cost of the last
Type 12Ms had been about £10m; Type 21s cost around £20m each; when
the first Type 22s were ordered, unit costs were estimated at £30m
though, by the time that the first ship (HMS Broadsword)
commissioned in 1979, inflation had driven this figure up to £68m,
which was far higher than the cost of the contemporary Type 42s (HMS
Glasgow, also commissioned in 1979, cost £40m).

After the first four ("Batch I") ships, the design was "stretched",
with the Frigate Refit Complex suitably enlarged. Visually, and in
addition to the increase in length, the biggest difference was the
sharply raked stem, usually indicative of bow sonar (though none of
the Batch II ships was thus fitted). An important addition to the
Batch II group was a new Computer Assisted Command System (CACS-1),
replacing the CAAIS fitted to the Batch I ships.This could track up
to 500 targets, including those detected by the ships passive towed
array and ESM. The most significant change in this group of six Type
22 frigates is much more sophisticated electronic warfare systems,
particularly the outboard system for the intercept of Soviet naval
and submarine communications. This very sophisticated and
specialised versions of the Type 22 were specifically approved by
Prime Minister James Callaghan. The larger hull also improved sea
keeping, but never achieved the expected quietness with towed
arrays, according to Captain Doug Littlejohns of the Type 22, HMS
London (due to failure to raft mount the diesel generators) in
operations in the UK-Iceland- Greenland gap where they were expected
to play an important role in preventing and monitoring the passage
of Soviet naval units a critical stage of the Cold War. A revised
machinery installation was adopted from HMS Brave onwards, with Spey
turbines replacing the previous Olympus. The future machinery
arrangement would be COGAG (Combined Gas turbine And Gas turbine).
By 1982, the quoted unit cost of a Type 22 had risen to £127m.

This might have been the end of the Type 22 programme had it not
been for the Falklands War (1982), in which the two ships of the
class present (Broadsword and Brilliant) acquitted themselves well.
Replacements for ships lost in the South Atlantic were all of this
class.

Batch 3:

The last four ships of the class (the Batch III ships
Cornwall, Cumberland, Campbeltown and Chatham) were of a greatly
improved design. Reflecting lessons learned in the Falklands, the
weapons fit was changed, becoming more optimised to a general
warfare role; the only major weapon system shared with the previous
vessels was the pair of six-cell Seawolf launchers. The ships were
fitted with the 4.5" (114m) gun, primarily for NGS (Naval Gunfire
Support for land forces). Exocet was replaced by the superior
Harpoon with eight GWS 60 missile launchers fitted laterally abaft
the bridge, and each ship would carry a Goalkeeper CIWS (Close-In
Weapon System).

In their final form, the Type 22s were the largest frigates ever
built for the Royal Navy - the follow-on Type 23 class would be
appreciably smaller ships. Reflecting this, Type 22s were often
deployed as flagships for NATO Task Groups.